October 21, 2010

Tiger Woods 'Much Better, Much More Grounded': With only a few chances left to avoid a year without a single tournament win, Tiger Woods believes that things are starting to look up. "My game is coming around," he said. As for his personal travails, he said, "I think that I come from a much better place, much more grounded place now than I ever have before."

While I haven't lost any sleep over this either, I do question his sincerity a bit.
He doesn't take full ownership of his behavior:
"I learned a lot about myself, and I learned how things went wrong, why they went wrong, and had to take a pretty deep and introspective look at myself. And there wasn't a lot of things I like about it," Woods said

How things went wrong? Why things went wrong? There wasn't a lot of things I like about it?

I'd prefer a statement on the lines of "I now know where I went wrong, and why I made the wrong choices in the past. I took a deep and introspective look at myself, and there wasn't a lot of things I liked about myself."

To me his statement has a victim feel to it...things went wrong...as opposed to I went wrong.

His whole career has been more or less based on that way of thinking. Nothing that goes wrong on the course is ever his fault. Ever. His confidence was always allowed to grow, to feed on itself. He simply would not allow any mishap to knock it. In sport, it's a wonderful mentality to be able to employ; in life, not so much.

Although I enjoyed his comeuppance, I'm getting tired of Bad Tiger. Golf is more entertaining when he's on the leaderboard. It means more when a tournament winner has to beat Tiger than when he's out there among the duffers just trying to play to Sunday.

rcade...Are you implying that the tour is made up of "duffers" just waiting for Tiger to return to make it entertaning? Seems to me there have been some interesting competition going on among the "duffers" in his absence. But then going back aways there was Arnie's Army, the Golden Bear, and the Shark just to name a few who kinda made it entertaining and interesting. Just to name a few. Wonder too if Lefty, among several others, realize he's a duffer. The brief resurgence of Tom Watson spiced things up for a few days too.

As I view it, Arnie put the game on t.v. and made it entertaining, interesting and very profitable for the players. Yeah, the good old days when we knew nothing of the off course activities and privates lives of the great ones and didn't care. Although, admittedly, the media didn't try or to pry to get into the private lives of athletes for the most part in those days. Oh my, I could go on, but I'd better stop here!

Tiger was, and may become again, the best golfer the sport has seen.
His spin, his way of speaking to microphones, has always been professional and, therefor, somewhat sheltered.
It's not, and should not be about what he says. Why would we care about his words (or off course actions, for that matter.)
If he feels he's over the recent unpleasantness emotionally, then god help the rest of the field.

I don't think he ever gets over the recent "unpleasantness" (seriously?). He can't regain the air of invincibility he once had. That's a one-time deal. Were I an opponent of his, I wouldn't necessarily go looking for information about his life away from the course, but I know I'd feel a lot more like I could beat him now than I would have done a few years ago. He can become great again, but not in the same way as before. He won't win as many titles as he once did because the rest of the field fell back in awe and respected him too much, but that's probably a good thing; means we might actually see some fights out there. Only so many times you can be impressed by watching someone snake charm the field into submission.

And I agree with rcade - I like it better when he's up there in the mix, keeping the rest of them honest. He lit it up on the final day of the Ryder Cup and watching it - even on tape - reminded me of how exciting a player he is when he's on it. He's not Ali anymore, although he's hardly sunk to Tyson, but he's still the man to beat.

As a former competitive golfer, I always look forward to JJ's comment on this board when golf comes up. His story about a year ago of his whack at the tour was one of this site's best. But to add to his comment, were I an opponent of his, I think I'd try to get a sponsorship from the Cadillac Ranch and wear their cap proudly in front of him to try to get under his skin a little.

I don't think he ever gets over the recent "unpleasantness" (seriously?). He can't regain the air of invincibility he once had.

What, you don't think it was unpleasant?
If Tiger is able to come anywhere close to his earlier form he'll still dominate. As you'll recall, for a fairly long period his points standing was more than the those of the 2nd and 3rd place players combined. As you'll further recall, when he was on the top of the game he chose to change his swing, lowering his threat for a period of time, but emerging stronger.
I dunno, I was never a contender for anything, but as a fan I don't think writing him off as a serious threat in any competition is a good idea.

I'm certainly not writing him off - far from it - only saying that whatever he becomes next, he can never again be the guy he was, or, more accurately, was perceived to be. The nature of his dominance was total. He had everyone's number, and everyone knew it. There isn't a top flight player over the last 15 years that hasn't folded like a cheap suit against Tiger in a scenario where they might, arguably, have kept their cool if they were going head-to-head with someone (anyone) else. He won a number of his majors (and decent percentage of his tour events) partly because of who he was, and not so much because of how he played. Superb golfers with seemingly excellent attitudes and mentalities (I'm thinking of Els, Mickelson, Goosen, Singh in particular) were reduce to admitting to the media - sometimes unprompted - that they were really playing for second most weeks. It is my opinion that Woods no longer makes the best guys feel that way.

As for my questioning of your use of the word "unpleasantness", I wasn't trying to suggest that what he's been through (and put his family through) wasn't unpleasant, merely, as I suspect you know, that to describe it as "unpleasantness" was to understate it somewhat.

I've paraphrased him before, so I apologise for doing it again, but Geoff Ogilvy summed it up best for me: "Tiger can never regain what he had - that aura of invincibility - but I do believe he can reinvent himself and come back as something else. And knowing Tiger, that something else will be even more difficult to beat."